Tag Archives: Albania

Rescue workers comb ruins of hotel for Albanian quake survivors

By Florion Goga

DURRES, Albania (Reuters) – Rescue workers sifted through the rubble of a hotel by the Adriatic Sea for possible survivors on Friday, three days after a 6.4-magnitude destroyed the six-storey building and many others in the Albanian port of Durres and surrounding areas.

The death toll from the quake, Albania’s worst ever, has reached 49. There have been more than 500 aftershocks since Tuesday’s quake, some with a magnitude of more than 5.0, rocking already damaged buildings and terrifying residents.

The sea-front hotel, the Mira Mare, is now the only site where rescue work is still continuing. The search teams, from neighboring Serbia, Montenegro and North Macedonia, said a female dancer was believed to be buried beneath the rubble.

Nearby, another hotel, the Ljubljana, was leaning to one side, its ornamental Roman columns cracked. Shattered glass and a toppled potted plant lay strewn across what had been its reception area.

A woman pushed a pushchair piled high with bags of what appeared to be possessions she had managed to rescue from the wreckage of her home.

“At the moment when the earthquake struck, I wasn’t scared at all. But when I went out, and saw the horror, I became petrified,” said Durres resident Tahir Halili.

“Even now, as we speak, I am not at all well. When I saw all that destruction, that hell, all those lost lives, my friend, it is unbelievable.”

Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said 25 people had died in Durres, 23 in the northern town of Thumane and one in the town of Lac. The quake damaged more than 700 houses in Durres, destroyed 12 more and left nearly 200 apartment buildings with cracks and fissures, he said.

Rama extended a 30-day state of emergency already in force in Durres and Thumane to Lac. A family of six was due to be buried in Thumane on Friday.

More than 5,000 people have been left homeless by the quake, Rama said. They are being housed in hotels, schools, gyms and other temporary accommodation.

“Do not stay at home if it is damaged,” Defence Minister Olta Xhacka appealed to citizens during a news conference.

“We are able to offer shelter, food and clothing. The quality of life and health of citizens is our concern and life in tents is temporary.”

(Writing by Benet Koleka, Editing by Ivana Sekularac and Gareth Jones)

Rescuers use drones and dogs to search for Albanian quake victims

By Fatos Bytyci and Benet Koleka

THUMANE/DURRES, Albania (Reuters) – Emergency crews found five more bodies on Wednesday as they used drones, dogs and heavy machinery to search through the wreckage after Albania’s worst earthquake in decades, bringing the death toll to at least 30.

In the town of Thumane, close to the center of Tuesday’s quake, a woman stood in front of a collapsed building calling out for rescuers to find her niece.

Soon after crews brought out two bodies. Police said they had found another victim earlier, before dawn. Another two were recovered hours later.

In one of the busiest streets in the resort of Durres, two people were feared trapped in the rubble of a collapsed hotel.

“We don’t know whether they are alive or not,” Mert Eryuksel, a rescue worker from Turkey said.

Countrywide, the Defence Ministry said around 650 had been injured, with another 20 reported missing.

If the death toll continues to rise, the earthquake could be more deadly than one in 1979 in which 40 were killed.

The 6.4 magnitude quake, centered 30 km (19 miles) west of Tirana, was felt across the Balkans and in the southern Italian region of Puglia, across the Adriatic Sea from Albania.

At least 250 aftershocks – two of them magnitude 5 – then shook the Balkan country, continuing into Wednesday. Hundreds of people spent the night sleeping in tents pitched by the emergency services.

Italy, France, Romania, Turkey, Greece, Croatia, Montenegro, Kosovo and Serbia have sent 200 specialized troops, tools and teams of tracker dogs to help the relief effort.

Adrian Muci said six of his relatives had died in two separate buildings, and his own house was on the point of collapse.

“I have other cousins and relatives but I don’t know where they are and if they are dead or not,” he told Reuters. “I will never be able to live in my house any more.”

The government proclaimed Wednesday a day of mourning and Prime Minister Edi Rama said the authorities would rehome people who had lost their houses in hotels during the winter.

“I believe we shall put them in new houses within 2020, in better housing that they had,” Rama said in a televised comment.

He said a donor conference with Turkey and regional countries would be organized and he would discuss potential help with NATO allies during next week’s summit in London.

Albania is the poorest country in Europe, with per capita income a quarter of the European Union average, according to the International Monetary

(Reporting by Fatos Byticy; Writing by Ivana Sekularac; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

 

Powerful quake kills 13 in Albania as buildings bury residents

By Benet Koleka and Fatos Bytyci

TIRANA/THUMANE (Reuters) – At least 13 people were killed when the most powerful earthquake to hit Albania in decades shook the capital Tirana and the country’s west and north on Tuesday, tearing down buildings and burying residents under rubble.

Residents, some carrying babies, fled apartment buildings in Tirana and the western port of Durres after the 6.4 magnitude quake struck shortly before 4 a.m. (0300 GMT).

In the northern town of Thumane, Marjana Gjoka, 48, was sleeping in her apartment on the fourth floor of a five-storey building when the quake shattered the top floors.

“The roof collapsed on our head and I don’t know how we escaped. God helped us,” said Gjoka, whose three-year-old niece was among four people in the apartment when the quake struck.

The quake was centered 30 km (19 miles) west of Tirana, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said, and was also felt across the Balkans and in the southern Italian region of Puglia.

Hours later a magnitude 5.4 earthquake hit Bosnia, with an epicentre 75 km (45 miles) south of Sarajevo, monitors said. There were no immediate reports of injuries.

Five people were found dead in the rubble of apartment buildings in the northern Albanian town of Thumane and a man died in the town of Kurbin after jumping out of a building, a Defence Ministry spokeswoman said.

Seven bodies were pulled from collapsed buildings in Durres, the main port and tourism destination, the Defence Ministry said, adding 39 had been pulled out alive from under the ruins.

Defence Minister Olta Xhacka said 135 people were injured.

Firefighters, police and civilians were removing the debris from collapsed buildings in Thumane. Most of the buildings that collapsed were built of bricks, a Reuters reporter said.

Rescuers in Thumane used a mechanical digger to claw at collapsed masonry and remove a tangle of metal and cables. Others groped with bare hands to clear rubble.

Two people were pulled from rubble in Thumane four hours after the quake, a Reuters reporter said. Doctors said they were in a bad condition.

“Everything at home kept falling down,” Refik, a Tirana resident, said of the impact on his sixth-floor apartment.

“We were awake because of the previous quakes, but the last one shook us around,” he told Reuters, referring to smaller tremors recorded in the hour before the main quake.

Rescuers told local media one of the dead was an elderly woman who saved her grandson by cradling him with her body.

TRAPPED

Xhacka said the quake’s epicentre was in Durres. It was followed by 100 aftershocks.

“Durres and Thumane are the areas worst hit. Rescue-and-save work continues in the collapsed buildings there,” she said as troops pulled a victim from a hotel in Durres.

At least 135 people were injured, with 72 hospitalized, Xhacka said. Two planes from fellow NATO-member Romania were expected to land with specialized search and rescue equipment and help was coming from Italy and Turkey, Xhacka said.

Greece had sent emergency services for search and rescue operations, its premier’s office said.

“Firefighters and army staff are helping residents under the rubble”, in Durres and Thumane, the Defence Ministry said.

An unidentified man, with a wound dressing on his right cheek, told News24 TV his daughter and niece were among those trapped in a collapsed apartment building in Durres.

“I talked with my daughter and niece on the phone. They said they are well and are waiting for the rescue. Could not talk to my wife. There are other families, but I could not talk to them,” the man said.

Located along the Adriatic and Ionian Seas, between Greece and Macedonia, Albania experiences regular seismic activity.

An earthquake of 5.6 magnitude shook the country on Sept. 21, damaging around 500 houses and destroying some. The Defence Ministry had said it was the most powerful quake in Albania in the last 30 years.

The images of collapsed buildings in urban areas suggested Tuesday’s quake was more powerful than one in 1979 which razed a neighborhood of a northern town. Neither of those two earlier earthquakes caused fatalities.

The Balkan nation is the poorest country in Europe, with an average income of less than a third of the European Union average, according to Eurostat data.

(Reporting by Benet Koleka in Tirana and Fatos Bytyci in Thumane; Writing by William Maclean; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Albanian teens develop app for domestic violence victims

Albanian teens develop app for domestic violence victims
By Benet Koleka

TIRANA (Reuters) – Three Albanian 16-year-old girls have developed an app to help victims of domestic violence access support, hoping to tackle a huge problem in Albania, where one in two women suffered abuse last year, according to a survey.

They will launch their app, known as GjejZâ, (Find your Voice), on Friday, after winning an international technology competition for girls in the United States.

“Violence against women is a huge issue in Albania and it also affects us as teenage girls because we see the early stages of this even in our peers, in our friends,” said Jonada Shukarasi, one of the developers.

One in two women suffers violence in Albania, said Iris Luarasi, the head of a national hotline for abused women, citing a 2018 survey, and 4,000 cases were reported in 2018.

A new report by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) found almost 9 in 10 women consider violence against women to be common in Albania, and that 97% of victims of intimate in-house violence never report it to the police.

Known as the D3c0ders, the girls – Arla Hoxha, Dea Rrozhani and Jonada Shukarasi – learned how to code and create applications four years ago through an outreach program run by the U.S. Embassy in Tirana.

News of their award in the Technovation Challenge competition has stoked national pride in Albania, an ex-communist country that is now a NATO member endeavouring to join the European Union.

The girls have received widespread coverage and congratulations from senior government officials.

This year’s competition required participants to build an app that tackled social problems, so the girls decided to focus on gender-based violence. They worked with psychologists, a deputy interior minister and women’s issues experts.

“Find your Voice” has become not only our motto, but the message we want to convey to all Albanian women,” said Rrozhani.

“GjejZâ helps women fight gender-based violence in three easy steps by identifying the problem, empowering the user and enabling them to take action,” she said.

Users answer a series of questions which helps them identify if they are victims of domestic violence, and the app offers them testimonies from women who have escaped abuse and encouragement to report it.

The scope of the app is huge – it provides breathing exercises to help women, connects them to state officials in every town who can help them secure restraining orders and access benefits. It also advises on employment opportunities and shelters.

Women can download the app, and get in touch with the police and support groups by phone or instant messaging. Mobile phone ownership is high in Albania – a population of 2.8 million uses 4.63 million mobile phones.

Tara Chklovski, founder and chief executive of Technovation, said the judges felt the girls had “addressed the difficult topic of abuse bravely and thoughtfully from the research to product development”.

Romina Kuko, Albania’s deputy interior minister, regretted the number of attacks remained high, but added Albania was fighting domestic violence with full force.

“I will be happy to see the application up and running,” she said.

(Reporting by Benet Koleka; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)

WHO issues warning as measles infects 34,000 in Europe this year

FILE PHOTO: A vial of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine is pictured at the International Community Health Services clinic in Seattle, Washington, U.S., March 20, 2019. REUTERS/Lindsey Wasson/File Photo

By Kate Kelland

LONDON (Reuters) – More than 34,000 people across Europe caught measles in the first two months of 2019, with the vast majority of cases in Ukraine, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday as it urged authorities to ensure vulnerable people get vaccinated.

The death toll among 34,300 cases reported across 42 countries in the WHO’s European region reached 13, with the virus killing people in Ukraine – which is suffering a measles epidemic – as well as in Romania and Albania. The risk is that outbreaks may continue to spread, the WHO warned.

“If outbreak response is not timely and comprehensive, the virus will find its way into more pockets of vulnerable individuals and potentially spread to additional countries within and beyond the region,” it said in a statement.

“Every opportunity should be used to vaccinate susceptible children, adolescents and adults.”

Measles is a highly contagious disease that can kill and cause blindness, deafness or brain damage. It can be prevented with two doses of an effective vaccine, but – in part due to pockets of unvaccinated people – it is currently spreading in outbreaks in many parts of the world including in the United States, the Philippines and Thailand.

In Europe, the majority of measles cases so far in 2019 are in Ukraine, which saw more than 25,000 people infected in the first two months of the year.

There is no specific antiviral treatment for measles, and vaccination is the only way to prevent it, the WHO said. Most cases are in unvaccinated or under-vaccinated people.

It added that even though the region had its highest ever estimated coverage for the second dose of measles vaccination in 2017 – at around 90 percent – some countries have had problems, including declining or stagnating immunization coverage in some cases, low coverage in some marginalized groups, and immunity gaps in older populations.

The WHO called on national health authorities across the region to focus efforts on ensuring all population groups have access to vaccines.

“The impact on public health will persist until the ongoing outbreaks are controlled,” it said, adding that health authorities should “identify who has been missed in the past and reach them with the vaccines they need.”

A report by the United Nations children’s fund UNICEF last month found that more than 20 million children a year missed out on measles vaccines across the world in the past eight years, laying the ground for dangerous outbreaks.

(Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Christian Radio Station To Bring Hope To Communist Nation

For years in the country of Albania, the communist government once exerted such control over the publications and broadcasting that you could not buy a dictionary with God in it.

Now, the country is undergoing a revolution of hope as a Christian radio station is airing programming in the Albanian’s native language aimed at bringing the good news to the lost.

Radio 7 has been broadcasting Christian material to the country since 2002 but had been hampered by the fact their programs were translations of North American programs that were aimed at believers in the United States and Canada.

The head of Radio 7 contacted an American ministry called The Tide which works to create locally produced Gospel shows around the world.  The group helped launch radio ministries in countries such as Nigeria, Nepal and India.  They knew they could bring the kind of help to Radio 7 that would impact Albania.

“Like all of our programming, The Tide Albanian-language program, which also reaches into neighboring Kosovo, is produced on-site, using indigenous speakers who tell people about Jesus in the language they were born to speak,” said The Tide Director Don Shenk. “But our ministry in Albania also goes beyond airtime, and our ministry leaders invest into the lives of those to whom they minister, visiting with them, giving them radios so they can listen to the program, praying with them and encouraging them in their faith.”

The ministry of Radio 7 and The Tide has produced noticeable results in just a few short months with letters from those who said they were atheists or Muslims who have now accepted Christ as Lord.

Albania’s population today is less than one percent Christian.

ISIS Threatening To Assassinate Pope Francis

Pope Francis is standing up to the terrorist group Islamic State by heading to Albania for weekend services despite clear warnings the group intends to kill him.

He will be the first sitting Pope since 1933 to visit Albania when he arrives Saturday.

Iraq’s Ambassador to the Holy See has told the Vatican and local newspapers that ISIS had made it clear they want to kill him.

“What has been declared by the self-declared Islamic State is clear – they want to kill the pope. The threats against the Pope are credible,” Habeeb Al Sadr said. “I believe they could try to kill him during one of his overseas trips or even in Rome. There are members of ISIL who are not Arabs but Canadian, American, French, British, also Italians. ISIL could engage any of these to commit a terrorist attack in Europe.”

Al Sadr said when the Pope condemned the terrorists for their killings of innocents he basically put a target on himself.  While the Vatican downplayed the threat, Al Sadr said it’s a very real danger.

“This band of criminals does not just issue threats,” Al Sadr said. “In Iraq, they have already violated and destroyed some of the most sacred sites of the Shiite faith. They have struck at Yazidi and Christian places of worship. They have declared that whoever is not with them, is against them. Either convert or be killed. And they are doing it it is a genocide.”

The Pope released a simple statement on the matter.

“I decided to visit this country because it has suffered greatly as a result of a terrible atheist regime and is now realizing the peaceful co-existence of its various religious components,” Pope Francis said.